


December 9th - WWI-lock

by ohdrey89



Series: Mollstrade Advent Adventurous Time Warp 2015 [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, BAMF Molly Hooper, Christmas, Christmas Caroling, Depression, F/M, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Poor Lestrade, Silver Fox Lestrade, Wartime Romance, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 20:46:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5389664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohdrey89/pseuds/ohdrey89
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Advent Calendar of Mollstrade (Mollestrade, Lestrolly) continues.</p><p>December 9th - Nurse Molly Hooper employs her skills to cheer up an injured Lieutenant Colonel Lestrade, and he in turn surprises her on Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	December 9th - WWI-lock

**Author's Note:**

> This came out better than I thought I would, and I think you'll agree! Was a bit inspired by Rupert Graves's role in the Crimson Field. Some of his best work I've ever seen!!! A must watch!
> 
> Disclaimer: We didn't create it, we're not making money from it. But that's not going to stop the ideas from coming, so here we all are anyway. We might as well live.

**December 9th - An Officer & a Nurse**

\---

Molly Hooper sighed as she made her way into the patient ward of the army hospital she was presently stationed. It was France during a hard winter in the middle of the Great War and Molly pulled the fraying cloak that barely kept the chill out of her bones closer to her person as she let herself into the room.

Most surprising about this war wasn’t the chaos, it was this time of year. It was Christmas and the holiday spirit prevailed, Molly thought, even stronger than it would at home. At home, there was the nostalgia of previous Christmases to curl up to as the present Christmas would pale in comparison to the Christmases spent as a child. However, in this miserable place where bodies bled and men screamed, begged for mercy, cried like little boys in pain, covered in burns or with missing limbs, the whole camp - patients and doctors alike - halted their hatred for the carnage and the Keizer so that they could celebrate the holiday. The longing and the homesickness had everyone reaching for each other, and reveling in the jolly air of the true meaning of celebrating tonight. Every available space was decorated with whatever could be spared. Wild branches were hanging where there should have been pine boughs and holly, paper was saved from the rubbish piles so that the other nurses could cut out snowflakes. Tis the season, and the hospital for all of its weighty misery was just a bit jollier for it.

Molly listened to the carol singing concert the nurses put together as their melodious, happy voices echoed through the camp. The rest of the place was deserted excepting the recovery ward where the latest few in from the trenches were still mending. The nurses promised to visit them like carolers would visit houses back in England for a few songs before they would retire for the night. Molly smiled as she shut the door upon the singing.

Molly found herself replacing the head nurse that left to start another hospital camp. It was regretful that there was a need for more hospitals but the few that were mending the troops were overrun, and the numbers of wounded and dying were too massive to count. More injured meant more hospitals were required. The best nurses to start with the incoming fresh nurses were head nurses that were already here with mountains of experience. Thus Molly found herself running headlong into the unknown with her sleeves rolled up ready to dive into the blood and tissue to crying soldiers to save lives. Molly had taken great pains with her training and devoted hours not spent mending men, studying as a student of medicine would. For as hard as the doctors worked, Molly and her nurses were twice as dedicated, staying with the recovering wounded round the clock in double shifts if necessary so that the surgeons might sleep before they were inundated with the growing vast numbers of soldiers. She proved herself time and again with steady hands, a cool head in a crisis, and a gift for memorizing the work of the doctors to help with the simpler cases so that they might work on saving a man’s life, or his limb.

Now Molly was faced with a decision. There was a shortage of doctors among the army and instead of taking more doctors out of England, the army called for head nurses with enough experience wanting to be doctors. The army would support their schooling, on the job training doubling as residency, and all they would have to do is pass the exam, get the recommendation of the doctors at the camp that witnessed their work, take their Hippocratic Oath and the British army would turn nurses into doctors. More than once she had to face the derision of the male doctors at the camp for taking what they deemed to be an easy route. There was nothing easy about this path. Molly knew once she returned from the war she would seek out a proper education from any university that was willing to have her. Molly doubted she would have the license that would be given to her when the war was over and desired to be an equal among her peers, to go through the same process they did. With this determination, she faced the blood and carnage as the new head nurse with her head held high.  

She bid good evening and happy Christmas to the injured men as she passed, those that could sit up rushed to do so as she walked by and even a few daring soldiers condescended to wolf whistle. She shook her head at them even as she smiled. Molly was a sweet nurse, gentle but firm with her care and a favorite among the men. Molly nodded to them as she bid them goodnight but she wasn’t there for the men. Molly was in the ward instead of listening to jolly caroling nurses to fetch the Lieutenant-Colonel Gregory Lestrade.

\---

The Colonel had arrived at the hospital in misery, having lost the better part of the men under his command right before the holiday season and had injured himself trying to save the men that were left. The doctors pieced him back together despite his begging them to let him die, like a captain that was saved from his abandoned ship. With the loss of his soldiers, so too had he suffered the loss of his spirit. There was nothing more he could have done. No Man’s Land took more soldiers than illness or infection but that didn’t stop the guilt from eating away at him. Despite the efforts of all of the other doctors and nurses he had refused food or to bathe. He sneered and barked at anyone walking by that offered him any comfort. He had a furious temper, with a grumbling growl to match. Eventually after all of her nurses refused to care for him, and the doctors refused to treat a man that didn’t care about getting well, Molly had had enough. She had stormed right into the man’s tent despite having a hot breakfast tossed right over her shoulder and gave the Colonel a piece of her mind. When he threatened to throw her out of the nurses division, Molly told him pointedly where he could take his Colonel’s stars and put them.

“Will you eat?” Molly questioned once the Colonel had quieted down. He had given her an odd puzzled look, wondering why she would still bother to look after a broken man such as him.

“I am not hungry.” Greg grumbled slowly for the hundredth time that morning. If he couldn’t keep the men of his battalion safe, then he didn’t deserve to live either. What good was a Colonel that couldn’t protect his men in combat? He was an injured Colonel now, and good for nothing, a waste of space and his men weren’t the only ones to think so. He watched the head nurse huff at him. The blush on her cheeks was the only sign of her ire, and he hadn’t failed to notice how attractive that rosy bloom made her. Like any woman would have him now.

“You’re not hungry? Fine. But you’re still going to eat and I’ll wait here until you do.” Molly nodded once in determination. He was either going to eat or she’d make him and it wouldn’t have been very pleasant. Molly said all of this in the quiet patient way that scared the other men. She had procured another tray and spooned up some egg, waiting patiently for the man to take a bite. When he did, the pout on his face was almost as much worth as the sight of the Colonel eating again.

Molly was never very partial to many of the soldiers that came through the hospital. You couldn’t show partiality or fondness for any of the patients. To do so would jeopardize your sanity here, but something about the Lieutenant Colonel pulled at Molly. She worked hard during his stay to pull Lestrade from his misery and it had worked up to a point until a letter had arrived from his wife the day before Christmas Eve.

When she inquired if she should read it to him, Lestrade had rudely swiped the letter from her hand and tossed it aside, his miserable mood returning. “Why bother? All it will say is Happy Christmas wrapped around a plea for a divorce. Apparently, she doesn’t want me now that I’m half a man, coming home from the war like this broken and unable to protect my men.” Lestrade had sighed morosely as he turned away from her.

She had protested what Lestrade saw of himself through his wife’s vision, with tears in her eyes. Molly couldn’t remember the last time she cried since her first month being here in France. Sure enough with the Hooper luck working against Molly, the Colonel had been married, but that hadn’t stopped the feelings between them. The marriage he was trapped in was nothing like love, and Molly was no fool what she could, and would like to, be for Colonel Lestrade. “How dare she object to such a splendid, forthright, heroic man?! Why if you were mine…” Greg had looked to her then, his eyes wide. Molly gasped covered her mouth with her hand as tears spilled down her blushing cheeks. There they were, the feelings neither officer nor nurse would admit out loud, splattered onto the walls of the patient ward like the stains of blood and food. Molly could do little to hide behind the mask of indifference she used to treat the other man. She was in love with the Lieutenant Colonel, an attraction that she felt from him as well, and he was married. But when they talked and the room faded away, she felt something she had never felt for any other man of her acquaintance. When she watched him laugh affectionately at her badly worded jokes, the feeling magnified. She loved this man like she doubted she ever could love another. “I-I’m sorry. I-I have other d-duties. P-please excuse me.” Molly stumbled out of the ward on shaky ground unable to see around the tears that refused to abate. The look he gave her as she excused herself, cheeks aflame with embarrassment, should have told her that he felt the same but she had been too befuddled to notice.

\---

This Christmas night, Molly had begrudgingly been called away from the concert at the Colonel’s request. She had told him to be at the concert, for the morale of the men left over from his command. He was well enough to be there tonight and promised he would, but was being stubborn. Lestrade had been at the hospital for quite some time, waiting for orders to return back to England. But didn’t want to give up his command, to admit that he could do more from a desk in at home than shooting blindly at Germans across the trenches, dying in No Man’s Land. In a way, Molly was grateful that he would leave this awful place. Even if it meant their separation. She would bare it because she had to, she had a job to be getting on with and he would have his orders. Love had no place here in the mire of wounded and dying.

Molly pulled back the curtain to Lestrade’s bed with a frustrated sigh. “I thought we agreed-” Molly’s jaw dropped in surprise as a candle lit dinner – or the closest the Colonel could manage to it – sat before him. He sat upon the edge of the bed, the chair across from him was empty and waiting to be filled.

“I know we said that we would join the others tonight but would you like to join me for a late night supper? It’s not as elegant as Simpson’s but would it suit?” Lestrade grumbled, fighting the blush that rose at the tips of his ears as he ran his hand through his silvered hair. All he could manage as a patient was to be in his robe and pajamas, freshly shaved and had his hair combed. Compared to the nurse before him, the Colonel was horribly under dressed and didn’t really like it. He was fidgeting against his desire to be properly dressed.

“It’s lovely, Colonel Lestrade.” Molly smiled fighting the rush of tears that sparkled in her vision. She marveled at how easy it was for this man to induce her to crying.

“Please Nurse Hooper, for tonight would you call me Greg?” Lestrade begged with boyish grin that took the war off of his face. It made her belly flop. 

“As long as you call me Molly.” Molly encouraged in return as she sat before the spread. She barely noted the food they ate, mostly rations, or what they drank, mostly water with a little against-regulation gin. All she could see was the sparkle of the candle in Greg’s eye as he looked to her. Molly sighed looking down as the blush rose to her cheeks. “Listen- Greg- I-I know yesterday… what I said-”

“But I’m so delighted that you did.” Greg confessed as he met Molly’s eyes with a small smile.

“You are?” Molly questioned letting go a shuttered sigh she tried to hold in. There was such a divide between their positions, between their situations, yet here, now, his confession gave her such relief that sent her heart floating.

“Very much so.” Greg told her seriously as he took her hand across the steel surgical tray that served as their dining table, draped with a bed sheet.

“What about your wife? What will she say when she hears of the little nurse you have on the side?” Molly chuckled at her own expense. Greg looked down to his plate miserably with no answer for her. He would likely divorce his wife, but could she count on that? Could she take him at his word? Wives begged for divorce and men went back on their word all the time. And this war had changed Molly, she was no longer an innocent and she was no fool. She huffed in anger, throwing down the towel that doubled as their napkins. “I don’t want to be a piece of intrigue you use for revenge on your wife, I want to be yours and yours alone, and I don’t want to share you with a woman that has a ring on your finger.” Molly eyed the gold noose precariously.

“I don’t want that either. I’d rather be here with you, than comfortable at home with that poisonous chippie of a wife. After the war, I would like it if you were mine as well.” Greg grumbled, equally as angry that he wasn’t free to marry her, to Molly’s alone. Molly couldn’t help herself as she reached across the table and pulled Greg towards her until their lips met. Molly parted quickly with a gasp and it was pure electric bliss. Greg couldn’t help himself as he pulled Molly back into another kiss, a kiss that was longer and deeper than any Molly had before. Molly pulled away from him, her head reeling, with a whimper and resumed her seat.

“After the war, what do you mean after the war?” Molly questioned, her heart plummeting with dread.

“I’m leaving tomorrow, for England.” Greg told her pushing away his half-eaten plate. The news of his orders to return home had spoiled what was left of his appetite. He was equally unhappy to leave now that they knew how the other felt.

“I knew it.” Molly sighed miserably, it was only inevitable. “But you will write.” Molly encouraged.

“Every day.” Greg affirmed to Molly’s delight. They spent the rest of their evening before the carolers came in silence, but their hands never parted. Surrounded by the war, this simple touch was all they were allowed.

The next morning Lieutenant-Colonel Lestrade left for home and a comfy position behind a desk and Nurse Hooper continued her service to the men in the trenches until every injured man returned home.

\---

It was six months since Molly’s return from the war, and a year after peace was declared. She sat in her cozy London flat reading the present Lestrade had sent her for Christmas when he had first returned home. It was a book of John Keats’s poetry she had mentioned enjoying and she was in the middle of one of several poems both she and Lestrade recited to each other.

Upon returning home, she spent as little time with her parents as she could before moving to London. Molly used her connections with the army doctors to obtain a position as head nurse working alongside the men that had become her friends, and was working at attending classes to get her degree in medicine and apply for residency. It would take some time, but she desired to be a doctor more than anything. To be a doctor saving lives as she had and had witnessed during the Great War, would be almost as great an accomplishment as every soldier she watched return to their native land alive.

In the time she was at the hospital saving wounded soldiers, Lestrade communicated faithfully for a time, but she wrote consistently, whenever she could. Her letters were never sent back, but after a fashion was she neither was responded to, and eventually her letters trickled to a stop as the armistice was signed and her duties doubled as she worked to get the injured soldiers passage for home. Upon Molly’s return she wrote one letter to Lestrade from her current address, announcing that she was home and waiting for him. Now she went about her days tending to the people of England and prayed for Greg’s arrival by night.

With a sigh, Molly turned the page of her book and sipped at a hot cuppa. It was a peaceful evening, and too quiet for all of the explosions she was used to hearing. Her mind wasn’t hard pressed to keep from wondering to thoughts of Greg and the war during these quiet moments.

A knock at the door startled her from her daze. She rose, wrapping her robe tighter around her as she opened her front door. It was almost gone eleven, she was almost ready to go to bed. Whoever was on the other side of that door was going to get an earful from her in her best Nurse Molly tone of voice. Molly tightened her belt before unlocking the door and turning the knob with authority.

“What on earth-?” The question died on Molly’s lips seeing Lestrade standing upon the other side. The look of fire in his eyes upon seeing her made up for all of the time they were apart. Before she could reach for him, Molly found herself within Greg’s arms and whimpered under his probing kisses. One rolled onto another as she clung to his arms, peppered in white flecks of snow, and felt his cold against her warm cheek. Greg broke apart with a pained groan. She couldn’t know how he had physically ached for her all this time. The distance, hearing of the wounded and nurses left behind after the armistice, the disease that held them captive on the continent. More than once the generals had to keep him from running headlong over the Channel to fetch Molly himself. Now she was hear in his arms and the relief he felt made him ache all over again.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for not writing- The divorce- my work- I’m sorry.” Greg mumbled into her shoulder as he held her close. “I couldn’t put into words how much I longed for you, how I ached for you. I love you, Molly.” He listened to Molly’s cries of ecstasy at the words he spoke in his ear.

“It’s alright. I love you. We’re together now.” Molly smiled into his neck where she breathed in his smell. She ran her fingers into his silver hair, as he grumbled a pleased sound, just because she could now.

“I swear we’ll never be apart, I promise Molly.” Greg vowed wiping away the tears falling from the corners of her eyes with his wide blunt thumbs. She pulled him into her flat and closed the door from the snow that had begun falling outside.

\---

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr and reblog this and my other works from this series [here](http://ohdrey89.tumblr.com/post/134865050653/december-9th-an-officer-a-nurse). Spread the word.
> 
> I loved that!! And I hope you did too! Let me know! 
> 
> Comments and Kudos are our currency of love, spread the wealth around.


End file.
